GuestGiant tech companies don’t pay much in taxes, even though they derive much value from users in many countries. With this proposal, corporate taxes could fairly reflect where value is actually generated.

This is Singularity University. Based at NASA and with founding members including the founders of Google, its annual Graduate Studies Program is “A 10-week interdisciplinary program for top students and entrepreneurial leaders worldwide, aimed at solving some of our most pressing challenges.” From over 3150 applicants, 80 students were selected for this summer’s program, representing 36 different countries across the world. Over 60% have graduate degrees, 40% are women (an impressively high statistic for entrepreneurial programs in Silicon Valley), and many are successful entrepreneurs, investors, authors and inventors.

Twenty years ago, U.S. healthcare cost $2,800, on average, per person. Ten years ago, that figure had risen to $4,700 per person. And four years ago, in 2008, it was $7,500 per person, according to this Kaiser Family Foundation Report. Over the same period, the portion of Americans without insurance has risen. In 1990, 14.1 percent of Americans were uninsured. In 2000, 13.1 percent were uninsured. Today, 16.3% of Americans are uninsured (approximately 50 million people), in part because of job losses and employers cutting back on coverage.

Many people believe that we’ve run out of ideas and that the future will be one of bleak shortages of food, energy, and water. Billionaire Peter Thiel, for example, argues that, despite spectacular advances in computer-related fields, technological progress has actually stalled because the internal combustion engine still rules our highways, the cancer death rate has barely changed since 1971, and the top speed at which people can travel has ceased to improve.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes that health and medicine are going to benefit in the next two decades from what he calls the law of accelerating returns. That idea comes from Kurzweil’s 2005 book “The Singularity is Near,” and it reflects his optimism about how “exponential technologies” will come together to deliver a world where we can solve all of our problems. We’ve got an exclusive video interview on what Kurzweil thinks about those ideas now and how he is recruiting entrepreneurs to make his vision happen.

Ray Kurzweil wrote the textbook on how to save the world. In his book”The Singularity is Near,” Kurzweil (pictured above) wrote about how the exponential changes being brought about by the advance of technology and how that can be used to help humans survive longer and reshape the world. Back in 2007, he co-founded Singularity University with Peter Diamandis and they’re now graduating acolyte entrepreneurs.

Peter Diamandis, the chairman of Singularity University and head of the X Prize Foundation, says that executives had better be aware of exponential technologies like the rapid advances in chips (Moore’s law), biotechnology, or connectivity so that they can use them to gain a competitive advantage.